


First Light

by battle_cat



Series: Together [2]
Category: Mad Max Series (Movies), Mad Max: Fury Road
Genre: F/M, Fanart Welcome, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, really just some cuddling and pg-rated thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-19
Updated: 2015-09-19
Packaged: 2018-04-21 13:20:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,439
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4830554
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/battle_cat/pseuds/battle_cat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She wakes again at dawn, to the first light of the desert morning.</p>
            </blockquote>





	First Light

**Author's Note:**

> Sort of a prologue to [Zero to Sixty](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4983841/chapters/11447485), although they can be read independently.

She wakes up gasping. It’s dark and she has no idea where she is and why she isn’t dead, only that her midsection is on fire and it feels like there’s a weight sitting on her chest.

“’S better if you sit her up. Here, here.”

“Easy there, child.”

She hears voices—the Fool’s, and Janey. Janey, who survived the battle, unlike Keeper, unlike Maddie, unlike Val—

She feels two pairs of hands lift her and she must make a sound at the agony of moving her torso at all because she hears a hiss of breath and “Easy,” from the Fool and then she is settled back, sitting mostly upright against something warm and solid.

“Hey, hey. You’re okay. Breathe.”

 _I can’t_ , she wants to tell him, except she registers that she _can_ , a little better at least, in this position. Breathing deep is still unbearable but the feeling of weight on her chest is slowly fading, the dizzy roar of panic receding with it.

She registers that the warm, solid thing is the Fool’s chest, and that he has one arm around her and is rubbing slow, soothing circles with his thumb on her forearm. There’s something grounding about the touch and she finds she can breathe a little easier if she focuses on it.

“Hey. You’re okay.”

His other hand is stroking her temple, wiping away blood from the cut above her swollen eye that’s opened up again, encouraging her to lean her head on his shoulder.

His breath is steady and even beneath her, and she tries to match hers to it. She can’t quite do it, but it helps to have a rhythm to catch onto, and she slowly feels herself relax against him. She is tired, so tired, and everything hurts, but this is okay, this is…nice, even. If she went out this way she wouldn’t mind.

At some point he stops making circles on her arm and intertwines his fingers with hers. She gives his hand a squeeze to have something to hold onto.

“You’re okay. Sleep.”

She does.

 

She wakes again at dawn, to the first light of the desert morning. The first thing she registers is that the pain is still there, but no longer so bad she cannot think, and her breathing is not normal, but it is much easier.

The second thing she registers is that she had been sleeping against the Fool’s shoulder, his arm curled around her and her face pressed against his neck. Their fingers are still loosely intertwined, his hand over hers.

How strange.

He is sleeping too, soundly it seems, free of nightmares for the moment.

They are in the Gigahorse. She remembers now. They are driving back to the Citadel and Joe is dead.

Joe is dead.

How strange. To lie against the Fool’s chest in the clear morning light and feel the future stretch out before her, unmarked by the logic of revenge. This is new. However many days she has left, this is uncharted territory.

She lies still, not wanting to wake him. Not wanting to move because this is _nice_. How strange it is, to feel so safe leaning against a person you tried to kill three days ago. But she does feel safe, and comforted, and…something else she doesn’t have a word for. Like she’s been clenching a muscle for so long she’s forgotten what it feels like to relax it, but here in this moment, maybe she could.

Someone has put a blanket over them, Vuvalini fabric; she thinks Eves, who must be driving now, was wearing it as a shawl earlier.

She peers beneath the blanket and sees that her shirt has been rolled up to just beneath her breasts, and a neat white bandage has been wrapped around her ribs. Wife cloth, torn into strips, shockingly white and clean next to the version that makes up her top, yellowed with thousands of days of sweat and dust.

There are a few spots of red on the bandage, on the side where her own knife pierced her, but the fact that they are spots and not a flood tells her the wound has clotted properly. If she manages to avoid infection, she will probably live. She still can’t understand how…

Then she notices the small strip of bandage on her arm, and the corresponding one on his, and she puts it together. She is alive because of his blood. His blood that they put him in a cage to take. He gave it to her, and she lived. The realization provokes a strange rush of feelings, not all of them pleasant. Because she didn’t ask for that from him, and she’s not sure she deserves it.

She shifts a tiny amount so she can look up at the Fool, dead asleep against the wall of the Gigahorse. She has never been this close to him except in battle. Never really _looked_ at him until now.

She sees the wounds first. The bruise forming under the smear of blood from the crossbow bolt that would have ended his life if not for the twitch of a reflex. The scrape underneath his eye. (Had she given him that one?) The ugly red sore where the muzzle had rubbed his skin raw.

 _He knows what it feels like to be trapped, too_ , she thinks. She remembers how he twitched against the door of the Rig, even when he had a gun, even when he had all the guns, fight-or-flight response on a hair-trigger.

He seems so different now, solid and still against her, breathing softly, but she knows all that is still there. Maybe that is part of why they seemed to click together so easily, even though they came from different places, like two broken bits that combine to make something new and useful you didn’t have before.

The more she looks at him, the more she notices other things. The way his eyelashes look soft and golden in the morning light. The line of his jaw and the plane of his cheekbone. The way his body is all hard, lean muscle underneath her, just like hers. His full lips, half-parted in sleep. They’re a little cracked with dehydration but a sip of water would make them soft.

She’s lying so close to his face that with a tiny stretch she could reach up and kiss him, and…why is she even thinking of that? But she _is_ , and she imagines brushing a hand along his cheek, waking him softly and pressing her lips against his before he could speak, feeling him startle for a second but then kiss her back, their breath mingling, his tongue parting her lips, the way his hands would land as he pulled her close, one on her shoulder and the other on the three inches of bare skin between the bandage and her trousers—

It’s such a sudden, _specific_ image that she laughs softly at herself, which sends a jab of pain through her ribs, which only seems to reinforce the ridiculousness of it all. It’s absurd, _absurd_ , to be thinking about kissing at a moment like this, covered with blood and dirt and grime, no idea what the future holds, the ghosts of two knife blades slicing her midsection every time she breathes.

It’s absurd. She has no idea if he thinks of her that way, or ever would. She is not really even sure if _she_ thinks of _him_ that way, beyond a hazy fantasy. Those thoughts seem to come from another world.

Absurd to think about such things when she has no idea what will happen when they reach the Citadel, if any of them will live to see another day. No idea if he would stay.

She doesn’t even know his name.

She shakes her head at her own silliness and shifts ever so slightly, carefully, so she’s facing the front of the car. That’s when she notices Janey, silently awake with a rifle across her lap. The wry smile on the older woman’s face says she’s been awake the whole time and that Furiosa’s entire thought process has shown quite clearly on her face.

“Shut up,” Furiosa rasps, even though Janey hasn’t said a word. Janey just raises an eyebrow as if to say, _You could do worse._

“His name’s Max,” Janey says, softly, so nobody wakes. “He told you when you were dyin’.”

 _Of course he did, of course_ , she thinks. Always a step behind on things like that, wasn’t he?

 _Max._ She imagines the name on her lips. She thinks it suits him.

**Author's Note:**

> So this started out as "Furiosa finds Max pretty and has no idea what to do with that information," which I thought would be fun to write. Then, in thinking about when that would happen, it seemed to fit perfectly into the [missing night](http://cactusspatz.tumblr.com/post/124453846780/fury-road-timeline)...er, morning. So here we are.
> 
> [My blog](http://fuckyeahisawthat.tumblr.com/) is a Mad Max: Fury Road fest at the moment. Come and say hi!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [First Light FanArt](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13966728) by [confucamus](https://archiveofourown.org/users/confucamus/pseuds/confucamus)




End file.
